"Coping with the earth’s destructive forces has always been part of the human experience, but it seems to be an ever-bigger job these days. The number of reported natural disasters has steadily risen worldwide since 1980, and Asia-Pacific has been hardest hit (...) Now academics from the Asia-Pacific region have developed a project dubbed Disaster University, a global forum to share aspects of disaster preparation and management, from meteorology to urban planning to economics." (Quoted from article)